Residential lots in Creighton’s newest subdivision have officially hit the market, but so far no buyers are biting.
Though the 15 lots on Collins Crescent won’t be ready for development until the end of the month, homebuilders have been welcome to proceed with a purchase.
The lack of sales doesn’t concern Ald. Darren Grant.
“If they don’t sell right away, for me that’s not a problem,” he said. “It’s for the long-term use, and we needed the lots because we didn’t have any.”
Located beside the high-end Collins Street neighbourhood, Collins Crescent is currently an open field of sand and mud lined with wooden stakes.
Additional fill and grading are all that is needed to ready the subdivision for construction, a process expected to wrap up within the next two weeks.
Ambitious
Collins Crescent represents one of the most ambitious, if not risky, projects for Creighton in recent memory.
Town council budgeted just over $1.5 million to establish the subdivision, but some Creightonites question whether the $60,000 asking price for each lot is realistic in the local housing market.
“That’s out of a lot of people’s price range,” Perry Riehl told The Reminder last year.
But Mayor Bruce Fidler, an ardent supporter of the project, has called the price tag “very reasonable.”
Disagreement over pricing aside, there appears to be broad agreement in Creighton that with a small number of new homes being built in the area each year, the town needed to offer something.
The new lots will be large by local standards: no smaller than 7,535 sq. ft. and no bigger than 10,979 sq. ft.
The lots are similar to those that host the luxurious newer homes that have filled up the adjacent Collins Street over the years.
Even with a $60,000 price tag, the lots are subsidized by Creighton taxpayers with the hope that once homes are built, the resultant tax income will in time recoup the investment – and then some.
Fidler said last year that the asking price had not stopped some people from showing an interest in the properties.
What remains to be seen is whether that early interest translates into purchases – and more residents for Creighton.
Discussion
Across the border, the City of Flin Flon has made its own attempts to spur housing starts.
In 2012, Flin Flon city council voted to discount the remaining residential lots on the high-end boulevards of Roche and Murton, but to date only one has been sold.
Council agreed to waive the purchase price on what was then 11 lots provided the purchaser builds a home worth at least $150,000.
For every $1,000 in value above that amount, the city will deduct $50 from the debenture fee – which ranges from $10,388 to $19,213 – attached to the lots.
The normal cost of buying the lots ranged from $4,795 to $6,305.
In 2007, city council budgeted $200,000 to develop a new subdivision with about six or seven lots at the end of Horace Avenue near the Adams Street apartments, but the project never proceeded.
A year earlier, in 2006, council ordered a feasibility study to examine a potential new subdivision behind the Flintoba Shopping Centre, but again nothing materialized.
The study was to look at the practicality of extending sewer and water lines to the swamp and woodlands stretching from the rear of Wal-Mart and the former Extra Foods to Wally Heights.
